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January 1882 17 of aestheticism is one of the points of my lecture. I must get some breakfast now and see the town. Our voyage over was so monotonous that I am glad to get on land and see some people. Good-bye. You can define aestheticism for your paper as the science of finding the beautiful by looking for it in pursuance of fixed laws. As I said before, there is beauty all around us—even here,” looking around upon the horde of hackmen shouting “Carriage, sir!” at the top of their lungs. “Where?” eagerly asked the reporter, following the direction of Mr. Wilde’s gaze to an old lady selling apples. “Everywhere,” said the poet, relapsing into the indefinite. Mr. Wilde’s agent hurried him into a carriage, and the party drove off to the Brunswick Hotel. The most noticeable peculiarities about Mr. Wilde’s talk were a singsong division of words into a species of blank verse of his own, and a vacant smile which seemed to be part and parcel of the spoken lines. When talking of aestheticism, the smile seemed to suggest that he looked upon the whole business as an absurd farce and his arrival in New York upon a lecturing tour as its most ridiculous incident. 1. The famous self-portrait of Raphael, or Raffaello Sanzio (1483–1520), variously dated between 1500 and 1504, bears a rather remarkable resemblance to the young Wilde’s studied dishevelment. 3. “Our New York Letter,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 January 1882, 7 Oscar Wilde, the young English poet and apostle of aestheticism, reached this city this morning. He came in the Arizona, which arrived last night but anchored off quarantine until this morning. Mr. Wilde is a smooth-faced young man, twenty-six years of age and six feet, four inches, in height. His hair is long, his face is large and flat, and he dresses in an aesthetic costume, of which the most conspicuous parts this morning were a long bottle-green overcoat trimmed with fur, a sky-blue necktie, yellow kid gloves, patent leather boots, and a sealskin cap several sizes too small for him. The most noticeable peculiarities about his talk were a singsong division of words into a species of blank verse of his own, and a vacant smile which seemed to suggest that he looked upon the whole business as an absurd farce, and his arrival upon a lecturing tour as its most ridiculous incident.1 He talked freely, and said among other things: “My philosophy, about which I have been so grossly ridiculed, is the api -xii_1-196_Wild.indd 17 8/4/09 9:11:31 AM 18 January 1882 preciation of the beautiful, and coarse, indeed, must be the intelligence of the man who will knowingly sneer at that which makes the world about us so glorious. I have always loved nature in its wild, magnificent beauty. When I can meet her in the wilderness amid towering cliffs and hanging cataracts, then I love her and become her slave. I have since I can remember been impressed by the intensity of nature; but, alas, for the past few years I have been unable to gratify my longing. I have been a London man and have been surrounded by naught but smoke and fog. It is in the midst of the city life that I first saw all the follies of the present society and the grotesqueness of modern customs. I admire the Middle Ages, because their social life was natural and unharassed by petty rules. I approve of the mediæval costumes, because they are graceful, because they are beautiful. The surroundings of art, no one doubts, enhance one’s existence and make life worth living. This talk about the sunflower and lily is nonsense, sir, especially as I am represented gazing fondly over it. I love flowers, sir, as every human being should love them. I enjoy their perfume and admire their beauty. “I saw Patience, the comic opera, while it was played in London.2 I fail to see its point, sir, but think it a very pretty opera with some charming music. As a satire on the philosophy of the beautiful, sir, I think it is the veriest twaddle. Before I had made my mind up to come to America I had been informed that the Americans were very impressionable. I find them so, sir, and am extremely gratified. Grand ideas, sir, are more likely to attain the...

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